Set-up with Mitchell, Johnston, Hasbrouck, Fix, Evans, Jensen, and Cosby

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Faculty Cards, Brochures, and Tumblers

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Faculty Cards, Brochures, and Tumblers

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Trammell, Wilson, Coleman-Jackson, and Pfeffer-Gillett

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Stanton, Trammell, Youngman, and Smith

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Booze, Bars, and Bias: Anti-Blackness in Liquor Licensing Enforcement

This Article explores the disharmonious and disturbing influence of race in the enforcement of liquor licenses. Across the length and breadth of this nation, attentive Black revelers bear witness to an all-too-familiar trend signified by the disproportionately frequent closures of Black entertainment businesses. This Article argues that the punitive disposition toward Black entertainment businesses is not just a contemporary phenomenon; rather, it is a set of practices rooted in centuries of exclusion and regulatory abuse. Over the past two centuries, state liquor licensing agencies have emerged as contentious battlegrounds where legal, social, and economic factors converge—often to the detriment of the very businesses they were intended to regulate. Throughout the colonial, post-revolutionary, and antebellum eras, state boards and commissions used liquor license regulations to maintain systems of control and preserve the racialized status quo. By unveiling these historical and ongoing practices, this Article reconceptualizes how legal reform might rectify the structural obstacles that disproportionately affect Black entertainment businesses. Additionally, this Article challenges the perception of drinking establishments as trivial or controversial by highlighting their significance as profound sites for meaning-making, cultural production, and reclamation. This exploration presents an emic perspective that counters the negative and inaccurate stereotypes often associated with spaces of Black entertainment, leisure, and recreation

The Small Business Dilemma

Small businesses face a unique and challenging dilemma in today’s business landscape. On the one hand, they are typically and rightfully considered the more powerful party in their contractual relations with consumers, thus prompting a need to protect consumers against unfair contractual terms. On the other hand, when engaging with larger businesses, small businesses typically find themselves in the position of the weaker, more vulnerable party, possibly in need of greater protection themselves from unfair terms. This Article addresses the inherent dilemma faced by small businesses and argues that the prevailing perception of businesses as sophisticated and experienced, based exclusively on their categorization as “business parties” unjustly disregards the economic and market realities they encounter

Faculty Publications Display

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Cross-Examination and the Right to (College) Education: An Analysis of the Substantive and Procedural Rights

If the marketplace of ideas provides the basis for our growth and self-determination as a society, college campuses are the factories in which those ideas are cultivated, tested, and manufactured. Equally important, they are often the chief mechanism by which individual students are given the tools to meaningfully participate in the political process, in civic and social institutions, and the ability to chart socially mobile and economically independent lives. Yet federal courts have never recognized a student’s liberty interest in their education. Adopting a framework initially posited by Professor Matthew Shaw, this Note advocates that students retain a substantive due process property interest in a post-secondary education. Next, the Note addresses an equally compelling issue: once a student’s property interest in her education has been recognized, what procedural protection does a university owe her when adjudicating an allegation of some non-academic misconduct? The Note specifically argues in favor of an accused student’s limited right to cross-examination. Applying existing theory and current caselaw, the solutions reconcile a student’s property interest under one single doctrinal framework and provide a uniform set of procedural rules universities should follow in determining whether the student’s interest in remaining in school should be forfeited. The Note provides both students and their universities with a more stable, more predictable procedure for vindicating individual student rights and protecting education institutions as a whole

Faculty Publications Display

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